Google Yearns for Yahoo Partnership

October 4, 2012

There has been much talk in the tech community about Apple’s public diss of Google with the launch of its own map service and the subsequent neglect of the Google Maps feature the company had been using. Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt spoke about this change at a recent Nexus tablet launch, but perhaps made a more shocking statement about a coveted partnership. We learn in the Forbes article, “Eric Schmidt Says Google Would Love to Replace Microsoft as Yahoo!’s Search Partner,” that Google is very interested in replacing Microsoft’s Bing in a search engine partnership with Yahoo.

We learn in the article:

“Of course, Schmidt was involved in the discussions between Yahoo! and Google in late 2008 after the Microsoft buyout fell apart and before Carol Bartz approached Steve Ballmer to do a deal. Google and Yahoo strongly wanted a deal done, but the government said no. […] Several people who cover Yahoo have stated in very strong language that, although the search partnership with Microsoft has been a failure, there is no way that Yahoo could do an alternative deal with Google due to regulatory issues.”

With the marked drop of Yahoo’s search share, the situation is much different than it was in 2009 and reportedly Yahoo could end the deal with Microsoft as early as next year. We may learn more as the new Yahoo CEO (and former Google exec, to boot,) Marissa Mayer preps her presentation on her plans for innovating search at Yahoo. We are left to ponder until then if a deal with the Goog is in the mix.

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining
and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky.
He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues
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